What is happening in Belarus? Part 2
If you have not read my first story, I’d recommend doing so before reading this article. It is difficult to understand themsituation in Belarus if you are not a Belarusian, but I’ll try my best to explain. The first thing you should know is that Belarus is not a democracy! Actually, Belarusians do not understand why elections and other democratic rights are still written in our constitution if there is no chance to use them. We know that all power (judicial branch, executive branch and legislative branch) in the country belongs to one person, the President. Elections are just a performance with well-known results. He could have easily changed the constitution and declared himself a monarch for example, but Lukashenko has not done it for some reason.
The second thing you should know is that the situation in Belarus is not similar to the situation in Ukraine, it is not a West vs East story. Actually, Belarusian and Ukrainian stories have hardly anything in common. Our story is a “demand for democracy revolution”. We just want our laws to work and our voices to be heard!
You might have heard that Lukashenko won the last elections in August 2020 with 80% of votes. Belarusians could not believe in such barefaced imprudence. We saw with our own eyes, how many people were willing to vote for any candidate other than Lukashenko. We could have accepted 58% of votes for Lukashenko, but random number 80% we could not handle! If you are curious to see proofs that results have been falsified, check the report that was created based on information that people were able to get during the elections from polling stations.
I believe you need to know some history to understand why such things are possible in Belarus. Lukashenko was elected as a president in 1994. From the very beginning he started to take all power under his control. There were some protests during 1994–1996 that tried to prevent it from happening:
However, at that time people were busy with the dramatic situation in the economy and recovery after the USSR collapse, so they didn’t pay much attention to politics. Nevertheless, the procedure of impeachment has started, but Russian interference as a mediator left Lukashenko in power.
Steps that Lukashenko took to stay in power (I am not a lawyer, so I explain the idea with simple words):
- he introduced president security police (basically bandits that are responsible for killing and disappearance of main opponents of Lukashenko)
- changed constitution to allow president to be elected more than two times in a row
- president is a commander-in-chief of the Army
- judges and courts are under president control
It all led to the situation that we do not have separation of three branches of power (maybe it still exists according to the constitution, but courts do not care about the law when there is politics involved).
You can do your own business in Belarus if you do not interfere with politics and just contribute money via taxes. However, our legislation is always ready to close your business in case you decided to be politically active. Our legislation is extremely strict, so you do not have any chance of obeying all the laws. In normal life you can avoid issues by giving bribes to different audit services. However, political activity will cause all these services to check your business millions times per day until they find something your business can be closed for. E.g. your business can be closed because of slightly broken tile on the floor since it is an extreme danger to visitors lives. Children’s hospice in Grodno can be evicted from the building because of “tax violation” despite the fact that taxes were good just a few months back. The worst thing here that you can’t prove anything in court since it is a politically motivated case. Actually, you can lose your business or rent in case some of Lukashenko‘s friends decide that they need your business or newly renovated building.
To avoid future protests in Belarus a new law was introduced in 1997 that violates our constitution (but who cares) that protests can take place in Belarus only with approval from the government within a 14-day notice. Actually, nowadays even a picture of white-red-white marshmallow is considered to be a protest, so you can get arrested or fined… Based on the latest news, thinking about protest is a crime, drinking coffee in the park and showing white-red-white flag in your window are also considered to be mass protests, so you can be put into prison or get fined.. Requiem is considered to be a mass protest as well, guided tours are in the same list, but we will return to it later.
Next step is limitation of strike legislation. Strikes are allowed in Belarus according to the constitution. However! There is a law saying that strikes for political reasons are illegal in Belarus. Moreover, even strikes for economical reasons can be postponed by the president for three! months. Basically, strikes are against the law in Belarus.
One more essential point for an authoritarian regime is control of mass media. There are no non-government TV channels in Belarus. All of them belong to the government and describe great life in Belarus and awful conditions of living in all other countries in the world. There are some independent internet resources and newspapers that receive help from the western countries as part of the “Act to support democracy development in Belarus”. However, their audience is limited. Moreover, access to those resources can be easily blocked by the government during “hot seasons”. Basically, it led to a situation that this year people are mainly getting information from telegram channels. Nexta Live became the most famous one during the 9–11 August 2020 and got over 2,000,000 of subscribers. Actually, a court in Belarus declared the channel as extremist. It is funny since the owner of the channel was awarded the international Saharov award for peaceful changes together with Tsikhanovskaya and others.
I know you are skeptical, you do not believe that one person can force people to do everything to protect his power, but we have leaved in this reality for almost 26 years already. The rule is simple: either you disobey the law and commit a crime or you will get fired, put into prison for fake reason or simply get killed. Once you commit a crime, you are interested in keeping Lukashenko in power to avoid justice. It is easy to commit a crime when you know you will be protected no matter what you did. 26 years of selection left in power only people who do not have any humanity or simply do not have any will to do anything against the dictator (people also get paid a lot).
Favorite Lukashenko strategy as other authoritarian leaders is to find enemies abroad. He is actively accusing everyone in an attempt to take power in Belarus, to start a war in Belarus or to organize protests in Belarus, etc. Surprisingly, it is not only “west”, before August 2020 it was Russia! According to our special forces Russia sent specially trained men to destabilize the situation in Belarus right before the election. Belarusian special forces were able to catch 30 of them and around 170 left uncaught in Belarusian woods according to Lukashenko. Actually, Sergei Tikhanovsky (Svetlana’s husband) has been accused in the organization of bringing these specially trained men to Belarus while being in prison (a small note: if you run for president in Belarus you have a 99% chance to end up in prison).
Right after the election, when Russia was pretty much the only country who recognized Lukashenko as a legitimate president (China also accepted results of the elections), the story with Russian mercenaries has been forgotten (caught mercenaries were officially returned to Russia) and Lukashenko returned to his usual scenario of accusation the “west”.
Now, when you know the history we can return to the events of last months (August 2020 — November 2020 as of writing). In short, all Belarusians have been shocked by disproportional violence from the riot police during Aug 9–11 this year. It was dangerous to go outside, you could have been shot by the riot police or kidnapped on your way to the nearest grocery. Even staying at home did not give you any safety. Police have been shooting and throwing stun grenades in residential building windows. Belarusian women were able to change the trend, so protests became extremely peaceful (check my previous article).
To show peaceful character of the protest people started to protest during the day, so it is more difficult for the police to hide their crimes. The first large march announced to be on Aug 16.
To prove Lukashenko has 80% of votes he announced a large pro-government meeting on the same day as the announced protest march. People from all over the country were delivered by buses to this pro-government meeting, also an additional day off and bonuses have been promised to all participants (70%? of businesses are state owned We did not know how many people to expect on the pro-government march (it is considered to be 50.000 people). We knew that our (protest) march should be larger to prove we are the majority, but we did not know how many people are brave enough to show up. No one knew what to expect. No one knew whether the police would shoot or not. Everyone who went out on the streets on Aug 16 were real heroes. You most probably have seen this beautiful pictures of the large crowd in white and red colors. However, you do not realize how brave these people were. Basically, they fought with white and red balloons against the dictator who committed too many crimes to protect his power.
It was amazing to see the dictator was able to gather only around 15.000 supporters taking in account that he claims an 80% support in the elections. However, the best news was that more than 100’000 of peaceful protestors gathered near Stella in Minsk. Two pictures for you to compare:
I hope you have no doubts now who won the elections.
You can enjoy the show of Lukashenko’s speech during his meeting. Words are not important, the hysteria in his voice is the most important thing to notice. He is in despair and threatens people by enemies who want to destroy the country and kill their children. Actually he spent the entire month spreading rumors that “NATO wants to cut off a part of Belarus”, “NATO wants to start a war”, “They want to divide the country” and etc.
Eventually, state owned factories (remember that around of 70% businesses are state owned) started a strike, so police stopped the violence on the streets:
At that moment we hoped for a fast win. However, the most skeptical people knew the regime, so they predicted strikes would end soon and were right. Workers were told to prepare for a strike accordingly, collect signatures and set leaders. As a result, leaders were put into prison, activist had 1:1 conversation were they were described the results of their actions, e.g. the strike is illegal, that no one will get the salary during the strike, that you will be put into prison, that your family will face huge problems, that you are the only one who still want strike to happen. When riot police stopped shooting and kidnapping people from the streets in the evening, strikes transformed into “Italian strike” and almost disappeared.
First few Sunday marches were a real victory. Police arrested hundreds of people, but they did not use stun grenades and rubber bullets. Parents were told that government will take away their children since they are irresponsible parents who takes children to the protests. People felt great and it gave a lot of power to continue their fight. Finally, we saw how many people are ready for a change in the country. It is difficult to say exact numbers but we saw around 200 thousands in Minsk and around 500 thousands around whole Belarus. Official population of Belarus is 9.500.000, however many of them live abroad.
However, the main thing you should understand is that people protested all over Belarus. Below is the map of the protests:
Video below shows you people from small and large cities in Belarus as well as Belarusians abroad have united in their desire for a change. 40,000 in a city with population of 400,000 and 1,000 in a city with population of 10,000 despite the fear of being fired from work or other bad consequences.
“Surprisingly” you will not see any information about mass protests in Belarusian mass media. TV was busy with showing ex-president 24\7 and the way he deals with “essential problems” in Belarus. They could have mentioned that there are 20.000 people taking part into protest in Belarus (you will never hear s single word of truth from Belarusian officials). Despite protests being extremely peaceful with no sign of violence, every day from TV screens you were able to see information about radicals and extremists who take part into Belarusian protests. They did not have violent pictures during Belarusian protests, so to prove their point they have been using pictures from the protest (or even war) in other countries. It was easy to hear information that the police found some criminals that has been preparing an attack on “poor” Belarusian police. The most recent invention of Belarusian protestors according to the police are extremely dangerous slingshots! (Honestly, I believe people who wrote this report supports protestors and it is their way to sabotage the work).
Eventually, riot police decided it is too dangerous to allow people to protest (more and more people were coming), so they decided if there is no violence, they can create one. After several Sunday protests police decided to shoot and use stun grenades randomly. It allowed them to break the crowd and arrest people.
Their job is not to protect violence on the street but to arrest as many protestors as possible. They wait for protest to end and start arresting single people from the streets. Quite often they are citizen on their way to the nearest grocery. Being a stranger does not help you. You are arrested and trial will find you guilty since they have a reliable witness! There is no reason do not trust words of police officer in balaclava at the court. It does not really matter that court cannot prove the identity of the officer. Recently witnesses in balaclava started to provide fake names. Words of other witnesses or video recording is not good enough to prove you are innocent. Some people got a couple of trials in the same day with different records of the place where they were arrested. It does not prevent judge from finding you guilty in both cases.
It worth mentioning that it is dangerous to be an independent journalist. You are obliged to where a blue jacket with “PRESS” label. It helps SWAT to shoot you easily. Actually, if you get shot by SWAT, you can be fined for that! Do not ask me why, it is possible according to the Belarusian legislation! If you are a journalist of pro-government media, you are not obliged to wear the blue jacket, so you can do your work safely!
Basically, after some time all independent media lost accreditation and police forces started hunting independent journalist. They got arrested and put under criminal investigations. If you are an independent journalist in Belarus, you should behave like a spy: change your location frequently and be aware that any moment you can be kidnapped by KGB.
Law does not work in Belarus. Paramilitary are allowed to do whatever they want and they are not prosecuted for their actions. “Police” is using psychological and physical pressure to force you to sign any papers. They also like to make Chechnya-style videos where arrested people confess that they committed a “crime” and say that they regret their actions. Woman below is guilty in adding white-red-white ribbons on a tree close to her apartment. However, you see that interrogation is taken in a way you could think she is a terrorist!
https://www.instagram.com/p/CHxlH5bnRaT
One more video with heavily beaten guy:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CHim6PdntKA/
If you’d like to see more videos about police terrorist you can visit this youtube list.
Police mark the most active detained people with paint, so you can be treated in a special way in prison as well as next time when you got caught during the protest:
Fines for participating in unauthorized protest are extremely high in Belarus and reach up to $500 (average salary in Belarus is less than $500). Alternatively, you can be put into prison for 15 days. Actually, you can get two or three prison terms in a raw as well. However, government is going to restrict punishment and change fine up to $2700 and increase prison sentence up to 30 days… People are not afraid to be put in prison, but conditions of your sentence are unpredictable. If you are lucky, you can just be put into prison cell with slightly more people in the room that is supposed to. You can even get enough food and water. There is a chance that you can get mattress and be allowed to sleep on the bed. However, many people are forced to sleep on the floor. In certain cases you are not allowed to use beds during the day. No toilet paper, no water in the toilet, no shower, no woman sanitary pads and many other challenges you can face during your sentence.
The scariest challenge is beating. We want to believe the most severe conditions were during Aug 9–11… We know there were 37 people in 4m*4m cell… it was possible to hear people screams all day long, some prisoners were raped (including men), women were beaten in their stomach to prevent them from giving a birth to “wrong” children.
Some people tried to start official trials against police brutality, but their cases are postponed indefinitely. At the same time all victims immediately got notification that police started criminal trials against them claiming that they harmed the police officers… Many people are not willing to talk about what happened to them behind the bars. It is a huge psychological trauma, but people refuse any psychological help since they want to forget all the story…
Officials tell that there were a lot of violence from protestors, so SWAT was forced to use stun grenades and rubber bullets. I am Belarusian and I know it can’t be true, Belarusian cannot use violence, we are extremely peaceful nation. Recently, we got a record that illustrate the violence came only from the riot police:
Of course, there are might be some cases of violence caused by provocations and police violence, but it was an exception, not a trend. E.g. we know that protestors in Pinsk were able to lock the SWAT in one building on Aug 9 until additional forces have arrived to the city.
Police does not consider us to be humans, we are “wrong people” who ruins their normal life. Their behavior is similar to the behavior of Nazi regarding Jews, it is the main reason we call police forces “fascist”.
They are brainwashed and I am afraid they are among 12% of population that trust information on Belarusian TV. Not all of them… many left police forces during those three months after election. Nevertheless, the police and SWAT is the only reason Lukashenko is still in power. He is using repression to stop the protests. Every next march we see more and more violence from police forces. It is weird to see how people are not afraid of stun grenades and rubber bullets anymore. I still can’t imagine all this is happening on streets of Belarus. Every week on Wed or Thu we see how Lukashenko and ministers are trying to scare Belarusian people. Officials in their speeches allow the use of live ammunition, allow to cut people’s hands if they touch a police officer. Moreover, they were allowed to break the law during this “hard time” organized by our “enemies”:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CG-ah-unXq-/
Officials claim that only radical people are left on the streets, however they cannot find any video or photo recording of the violence, so you have to trust their words! Every Sunday we see a lot of military enginery on streets of Minsk and every time they expect to see aggression from people that never happens.
At school I’ve been reading stories about Jews in Nazi’s Germany. I could not believe that it could happen. Europe refused to believe that such horror is happening in the heart of Europe and allowed Hitler to raise. Europe believed in Hitler’s “official news”. The same thing is happening right now in my country. Police can humiliate you, beat you, torture you, can put you into prison for years for mock trial, but you can’t prove anything since no one will register your claims and evidence of violence.
All media is monopolized and describing beautiful life or “radical protestors” who confess in crimes after tortures. TV will not mention that the only window that was broken during the protest was broken by the head of riot police:
They will not mention how many cars have been destroyed by riot police, how many people got health issues thanks to police tortures. They just claim there are a lot of victims of protestors without providing any evidence. You can’t go to official TV channels or newspaper and shock everyone by your police violence story. No one will publish it. Yes, you can find independent media (with low circulation) or Telegram-channels, however their reach is limited to active people who follow the news.
Anyway, Lukashenko is angry that he can’t control information in Telegram. Police started to hunt on admins of Telegram channels. If you are an admin of large enough channel (over 500), you can easily be put into prison and beaten till you reveal important information. Belarusian started to hide all information and activities in their social networks, create fake telegram accounts to protect themselves. If you have a video of protest on you phone or if you have telegram installed, you can be beaten by police and put into prison. People are afraid to record their activity and have to hide their protest activity (yeah, sounds ridiculous, but it is true)… . Actually, regime is using this as a main weapon against protesters: “There is hardly any visible activity, it means everyone is happy about the current situation”. However, we are people are not happy, we are just afraid.
Format of the marches has been changing over time. Initially, it was family marches when police did not know what to do, so more and more people has been gathering every time. It was the most creative and cheerful time! Protesters took pictures with their creative posters and posted them in their social networks. Musicians with drums created amazing atmosphere. (Drummer just got criminal charges filed against him)
However, it is not the picture that our government wanted to see. Initially, they tried to say that only young stupid drunk jobless people are taking part in the rally. They claimed that protesters are getting paid by our “enemies”. It did not work well. People do not trust official information at all.
After a month of protests, riot police started to use stun grenades, rubber bullets, water cannons to prevent rallies from happening. Every march started to end with brutal kidnapping when people were heading towards their homes. Some people they kidnapped were people on their way to the nearest grocery store, however they were detained or charged a fine anyway. When riot police started crackdowns, people from neighborhood apartments let people in, so they can wait for police to disappear and protesters can reach their homes sometime later.
You should understand that march is not only people on the streets. March is a teamwork. It includes people who are afraid to join the rally but want to support participants with white-red-white flags and words of support on their balconies. It includes car drivers who blocks the streets, so police cannot use water cannons and minivans that are supposed to convey arrested people. Drivers also support protesters by special “Long-Live-Be-la-rus” horn and by driving them home after the march. Some people can’t go to the march, so they are ready to spend time with protesters children while they are on the march. March includes volunteers near prisons that help to register people who were detained, so relative can know what happened (police does not allow to notify relatives and not willing to reveal names of missing people). It is an amazing time of support from everyone. We could not imagine this to happen 6 month ago!
When police started to use guns against peaceful protesters again, we started to invent new form of rallies. The first one was woman rallies every Saturday. Actually, women are extremely active during the revolution. It is one of the reason it is called “feminist revolution” or even “revolution if pink ponies”. It is caused by the fact that Lukashenko always neglected to see woman as equal members of society. However, only first few rallies were not finished by violence from the police and eventually women rallies have seen crackdown similar to all other rallies.
Then elderly people march on Monday started to take place. It was a surprise to everyone. We are puzzled how they were able to organize. The first rally of elderly people was under stun grenades and rubber bullets (can you imagine???). Police tried to explain the behavior by “radical” elderly people, but looks like it was a terrible excuse. Now police reduced force for Wisdom rallies.
The next step are marches of disabled people on Thursdays. Initially, it was possible to do rallies, however during the time riot police adopted and do not even wait for march to start, they grabbed people into their minivans right away. They just go to minivan without a chance to be noticed by public.
In some neighborhood you can see spontaneous solidarity chain. This form of protest is popular among doctors and medical personnel. Doctors are the one who saw people after police tortures, so they are the most actively protesting part of the population. They aren’t allowed to strike, so solidarity chain is their main form of the protest.
Repression forced people to hide their faces and made peaceful protests in small cities almost impossible. People in small cities know each other, so police officer threaten you by criminal trial (e.g. violence against police officer) if they see you one more time on streets on Sunday. It forced small cities to go underground. The next step was to stop any activity in larger cities (over 200.000 people). Every week SWAT chose one city and all police violence was moved into that city. Less and less people showed up and eventually we stopped seeing large marches in larger cities and only Minsk left. Police violence is causing less people to show up in Minsk as well. E.g. my pregnant friend can’t go to march any more, my other friends can’t take their children with them. After some time Sunday rallies started to look like a protestor hunting:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CHDNwBjHKUf
Riot police has adopted to the rally tactic and does not allow protestors to gather together. It led to arrest of more than 1000 people every Sunday:
People were not able to gather in one large column, so we have changed the tactic. We do smaller marches in our neighborhood, so riot police spend time trying to find locations and deliver enough forces to the area to arrest people. We were able to reduce number of arrested people to 390 people per Sunday. My pregnant friend was able to join Sunday walks for short time again. Another friend of mine said the march feeling is a little bit different now: “The moment you leave your apartment on Sunday, you are an outlaw”. We do not have beautiful pictures of large column anymore, but the fight is going on:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CILHTM3HhP3
The worst thing is how people are treated in prisons. Every rally participant knows that imprisonment means humiliation in every possible way and in some cases you will be bitten with different degree of severity. You can take a look to the “police corridor” every detained person went through during Aug 9–11:
Several ambulances are a must after every Sunday rally. However, doctors are not always allowed to take heavily bitten people out of the prison. Many arrested people stay in prison in heavy condition with broken arms and legs. COVID-19 make it even worse since police can add sick person into cell full of protesters. Police does everything to kill the desire to visit the next rally. Every Belarusian joining a rally is a hero and those who are joining a rally after being in prison are superheroes.
They invent a lot ways to humiliate people, e.g. it gives a pleasure to the police to put white-red-white flag at the minivan entrance and force protestors to wipe their feet on the flag, sing Belarusian anthem that was introduced when Lukashenko came to power or “I love SWAT” or “Lukashenko is my president” song.
Belarusians recollected their times from the WWII when the country has been occupied by Nazi and started a “partisan war”. We safely block trains using wire to slow down railway (police has already started criminal case of terrorist act because of that). Activists paint everything in white-red-white colors. It makes police crazy, so they use housing and communal services to paint it over or destroy:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CG-NO4UnVKP/
Actually, regime fight with “protesting colors” is impressive. I do not think people would put so much efforts into it if regime did not do everything possible to remove colors from the streets. Quite often “people with guns” are responsible for removing “protesting colors”:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CHhqD3pHvtd
Recently they became lazy and just add green color to the picture to make it “prettier”. By the way, Christmas and New Year are coming, so Santa Clause is advised to wear blue or grey jacket this year to avoid protest colors on streets.
Even this it too much work for them. Now they prefer to cut a tree (instead of removing flag from the tree), cut a bench, cut an Eiffel tower of “protesting colors”:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CH5ZOPGhwxJ
There is even a map of the most unreliable areas in Minsk:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CHz7jzrH8uv
One of saddest moment of the protest is the death of Roman Bondarenko. In the evening “people in black” came to cut white-red-white ribbons near his apartments. He went out and ask them why they are doing this. After some time they attacked Raman. He did not try to fight back. If you do fight back, paramilitary will say they are police and you will be charged with criminal charges. You can’t ask the documents from the police or paramilitary in Belarus (they say it is impolite you do not trust their words). So the “team” threw Raman in the van (he was conscious at that time) and transported to the nearest police station. There are a lot of recording of these events. Later, we got information that people responsible for Roman arrest are: Dmitry Baskov (the Head of Hockey Committee in Belarus), Dmitry Shakuta (Muay Thai super middleweight kickboxer) and Natalya Eismont (press secretary of the president). It is not clear whether Natalya was present at that night, but you can identify Baskov and Shakuta from the videos of Roman “arrest”:
After two hours at police station, Raman has been delivered to the ambulance. There was a council and an operation, but doctors weren’t able to save hist life. Roman was beaten to death at the police station or on his way to the police station. It was shocking for everyone.
Officials are still trying to use their propaganda and claimed that Bondarenko was drunk. They believe it is an excuse not to look for his killers. Well even drunk people shouldn’t be killed..
Nevertheless, the doctor has revealed the information about zero alcohol in the blood of Bondarenko. As a result, the doctor and the journalist who published the truth are facing criminal charges now since they have “destabilized situation in the country”… No one is going to arrest murders of Bondarenko though…
Nov 15 was a rally in memory of Raman. It ended at “Square of Change” where people left flowers and candles. When majority of people left, police arrested the rest:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CHnPbkrHkkr/
They use an army of riot police to destroy the memorial. Some people were able to hide from the police in the apartments. However, police occupied the area and checked passports of everyone who wanted to go in or out from the buildings. It was a scary night. Police was checking the building every hour trying to find the protestors. Locked protesters started to think how 50 people in one apartment can survive for some time without being noticed by the police. We recollected stories of the WWII and how people have been hiding Jews from the Nazi… Eventually, in the morning when there was a police shift, protestors were able to leave the building unnoticed.
Short summary of last three months. Tsikhanovskaja won the elections, however Lukashenko declared himself a winner. We knew we won and when we saw “official results” we could not accept them. The protest movement came as a surprise for Belarusian themselves since we did not have any real practice in protest movement. We started our fight for freedom this spring and hoped to beat dictator during the election. We are learning on the go by watching political bloggers. We use Telegram as a mean of coordination between protestors since any other mean of delivering information to the people is not available to us due to government monopoly on information
Right after the election Tsikhanovskaja was kidnapped by KGB and transferred to Lithuania. She was forced to record the video where she asks people to stop protesting and accept Lukashenko as a president. However, people were shocked by protest crackdowns and knew she was forced to record the video, so they continued.
White-red-white flag was official Belarusian flag before Lukashenko came to power and for 24 years has bean treated a banned one. In one moment white-red-white flag became a symbol of protests and people in Belarus started to face troubles in attempt to find enough white and red cloth.
Initially people did not hide their faces and posted a lot of videos and photos from the marches. However, we see more and more repression every day. People are kidnapped and put under the trial because of their pictures. Actually, you can easily got arrested because you posted a picture of white-red-white marshmallow.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CG-fYxEHpGn/
Eventually, Tsikhanovskaja returned to the “fight” against the regime from Luthvania. Tsikhanovskaya created Coordination Council to start dialog. Three main requests of Coordination Council:
- Free all political prisoners
- Start trials against police brutality
- New fair elections
However, regime does not want to start a dialog. It got used to 26 years of monologue. They started repressions instead. Initially, they try to look legal, however they do not care about laws anymore. People are put into prison for 3 years when they shout from the balcony on police who was beating innocent protestors, independent journalist are arrested and put into prison as an “active participants and coordinator of the rally”. Actually, police like to find “coordinators”, they like to believe the next arrest will stop the protests since no “organizers” are left. Actually, for 26 years Lukashenko has been putting into prison anyone who was able to show some leadership. So, the “weakness” of our protests — lack of leadership is actually the strongest part of the protest. There is no single person you can put into prison and stop the protests. Almost every member of Coordination Council is in prison now and their attorneys are in prison too. One of the most prominent members of Coordination Council Maria Kolesnikova was kidnapped by KGB. They tried to transfer her to Ukraine similar as they did with Tsikhanovskaya (to support the theory that protests are organized by “our enemies”), however Kolesnikova teared down her passport, so Ukraine did not let her in, so she is in prison now.
While Belarusian were protesting inside the country, Tsikhanovskaja has been dragging attention to Belarus on international arena. Initially, she did not want to impose economical sanctions on Belarus to avoid economical difficulties for people. However, tortures in prisons and several deaths changed her opinion. It is clear that Lukashenko is not ready for the dialog. He just wants to stay in power despite the will of 80% of population.
At the same time Lukashenko has been seeking support of Russia and Putin in Sochi. You should know that Putin does not like Lukashenko as a person. Lukashenko always lies, so you cannot rely on his word and he deceived Putin too many times. Nevertheless, Putin should deal with Lukashenko since their authoritarian models are alike. Lukashenko forgot all the conflict he created with Russia just before the election:
They made some “secret agreements”, however we still do not know what it was. Some people say Putin gave Lukashenko two months to stop the protests, some says about money agreement, some says that Belarus should join Russia eventually. Lukashenko started to threaten Belarusians by Russia’s military support in protest crackdowns.
Two months to stop the protest could explain the craziness and cruelty that we saw last couple of months in Belarus. However, I do not believe in military support from Russia or “Belarus join Russia” story. The main reason is Lukashenko never tells the truth. The second one is Putin is clever enough to understand that Belarus is not a Crimea, he will not get us so easily. Moreover, Putin found an “elegant” way to be reelected during next election through the change in constitution, so he does not have real need to unite two countries.
When our TV workers joined a strike, Russian propagandists with their fake news have been sent to improve situation in Belarus. They did help a lot since only 12% of Belarusian population trust information from Belarusian TV channels. Lukashenko did not get military support from Russia (at least we want to believe in that), but he got informational one. It gives riot police confidence that Lukashenko stays in power and no one will be punished, so they continue to beat and torture people.
Next milestone was Lukashenko’s secret inauguration on Sep 23. People who have been invited to “the party” did not even know they are going to visit inauguration. Recording of the event was shown on TV in the evening. Lukashenko does not have any illusion of his support. He was afraid of massive protests, so he preferred to keep inauguration in secret. Despite the lack of support he still hopes to control the country with help of military forces.
To change the situation a little bit Tsikhanovskaja declared an ultimatum on Oct 26. Lukashenko should have resigned till this date, otherwise Belarusian will start a strike. It was the last time when Belarusians were able to gather together for a large rally. Lukashenko announced rally of his supporters on the same day, but have cancelled it one day before the rally. Official version is COVID-19 situation (Lukashenko denies that COVID-19 exist and doctors forced to tweak the statistic to make it looks good), however we believe he was not able to find any significant number of supporters. Actually, even state TV is having troubles to find supporters, so they show the same person in every news as random people from the streat:
Luskashenko did not leave. There were a lot of attempts to start a strike, however it was not possible to create a crowd near checkpoint since SWAT put everyone in their minivans. It is a major factor that prevented major strikes right away. Factory workers are not active telegram users (the only source of truth in Belarus), access to independent media is blocked from Belarus, so many people were not aware about ultimatum and crowd near checkpoint was a good way to inform the people, but it did not happen.
Many private companies supported a strike at this day as well. Eventually, many of them had to close their business because of “inspection checks” that started after Oct 26.
The process of people joining the strike is ongoing now. Everyone in a country knows Grodno Azot and Belkali are leaders in the movement. We learn details of their manufacture process to predict how people who joined the strike can influence profit of the companies. COVID-19 adds even more challengies. Some people got sick, some are joining “Italian strike”. At the same time factories are getting “observers” from KGB to controls that people do work and do not participate in any “activism”.
I know, it sounds weird, but for Belarusians it is a huge challenge not to work. Our life is work. Moreover, Soviet system prevent you from making decision and doing important steps. After USSR collapse Belarusians returned back to this world when Lukashenko came to power. It is easier to join the strike for people who work in private companies or travels around the word. However, for people who spend all their lives under regime, it is an extremely challenging step. Everyone is afraid to be the only one who join the strike and spend the rest of their lives in prison because of that. So, everyone who is joining the strike today are real heroes. I am especially proud by Salihorsk — the city I was born in and spent 18 years of my live. It is a center of the largest strike in Belarus! I expected Salihorsk to be the last city that would join the strike, but I was wrong. Belarusians surprised me a lot this year!
To scare people police started to demonstrate protestors “confession” over TV after they have been heavily beaten for a couple of hours:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CHim6PdntKA/
Now, you hardly can see any active confrontation except Sunday marches. Activities are hiding since showing your position openly is quite dangerous. I admire our sportsmen and doctors though! Doctors saw all horrors of police violence, so they are one of the most actively protesting part of the population. Sportsmen and doctors are one who are not afraid to show their position openly (many are still afraid though). Thanks a lot for that! Unfortunately, sportsmens get dropped from Olympic team for speaking up against the violence and doctors are getting fired for their position.
0Actually, everyone who is brave enough to make a tiny step in our main large goal deserve a lot of respect.
One more action of the regime that shocked everyone is the way regime punished Novaja Borovaja area of Minsk. Polling stations in this part of Minsk were brave enough to announce real result of election and did not do rigging, so Tsikhanovskaja got 80–90% of votes here according to the official protocols. Water supplies and heating has been turned off in this area of Minks when it was near zero degree of Celsius outside. Moreover, they provided chemical toilet of “protesting colors” to the area to make fun of protesters and their believes. Belarusian all over the country showed great support to Novaja Borovaja, so they could survive the outage time.
However, Belarusian are still have time for a joke and lough during those challenging times. Events created a lot of mems and heroes. It gives me confidence we are going to overthrow the dictator!
We have changed the format of the protest, but we did not stop protesting! People do not want to live with Lukashenko in power any longer. His time is over.
It is just small part of events in Belarus, I missed a lot of details since it is impossible to describe everything. If you want to follow dailty updates, follow the instagram
If you want to support Belarusians in their fight, spread the information and donate:
- “By Help” help victims of the regime
- “By Sol” Solidarity fond for those who lost their job or joined the strike
- “Country for Life” help for activist
- “Support of medical workers”
- Support of sportsman who lost funding because of their position
- Independent media help